


Salt, Pillars Thereof.

by otterzest



Series: All These Abandoned Buildings [1]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, DÆS9, Gen, Harm to Daemons, Retelling, Self-Harm, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23125108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otterzest/pseuds/otterzest
Summary: Commander Benjamin Sisko arrives on Deep Space Nine, and immediately wants to leave.A brief retelling of the Deep Space Nine pilot episode, "Emissary," with the inclusion of daemons. Please see additional series notes for more on the concept of daemons.
Series: All These Abandoned Buildings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662244
Comments: 15
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The players and their daemons: 
> 
> Benjamin Sisko: Delphi, European badger. Unlike their American cousins these badgers are social and communal, and often live in burrows they build in groups. 
> 
> Kai Opaka: Mother-of-Thousands, gharial. These crocodilians take excellent care of their young, often carrying them around and protecting them from predators after they hatch. 
> 
> Kira Nerys: unnamed pika. Pikas are relatives of rabbits, but are territorial, defensive and solitary. They cache flowers and food in burrows to survive harsh northern winters.

_“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.”_

Kurt Vonnegut, _Slaughterhouse Five_

Benjamin’s hand hovered over the door chime. This would be a short meeting, he told himself sternly. A brief formality, something that could have honestly been conducted via subspace transmission. Frankly, he would have preferred it that way. This was a waste of time, he should be back on Deep Space Nine overseeing recovery efforts. Getting to know his new crew better. 

His fingers rested on the square button. A formality. A formality he was annoyed that he had to conduct. That was the source of his reluctance, his irritation. The light sweat that had broken out along the back of his neck, the slightly accelerated heartbeat he could feel in the back of his throat. Because he did not want to do this, because he had better things to do. 

He glanced down at [Delphi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDRQcRJ-GPs), standing patiently at his feet. Professionally. She was groomed to federation standard, nails gleaming and trimmed, teeth clean and white, but no amount of polish could detract from the tufts of coarse fur prematurely greyed and flecked with silver, with then raised scars striping across her muzzle. Benjamin could clean himself up as much as he liked, but his daemon would wear those scars for the rest of their lives. 

For a brief moment he envied the Cardassians, the Trill, the handful of other single-bodied races he had met. No wonder the Romulans had decided early on that humans were an easy target: they bared their most delicate and private selves to the universe at large, conducted their lives through a projected aura of trust. It was as if in every room Benjamin entered, he handed the non human residents a loaded phaser and asked them to train their beams on his heart. He might as well draw a bullseye on his chest. A single shot here, and I would be dead without a drop of blood spilled - 

Delphi grumbled, a sound between a bark and a cough, drawing her human back into the present. Benjamin was still standing in front of the door. He shook his head to dispel the spiraling thoughts that buzzed around him like flies. This was absurd, he was speaking with another Federation Officer. A human at that. Someone with the same physical vulnerabilities as him. Not a madman Cardassian ready to rip his daemon away. 

But a voice at the back of his mind, neither his own or his daemon’s, still drifted in and out like a toxic tide. A human now, but not always. Who knows what Picard had endured? How could someone be separated from their daemon for so long, then brought back together, and still be thought of as a human being? Was he still sane? Was the bird, a tall slender raptor with a hooked bill and demure lashed eyes, even a daemon at all anymore? 

Was the man’s mind entirely still human, or were parts still patched up with scraps of Borg hardware and philosophies and god knows what else? Was the daemon pure Dust, or was she too augmented, a fake thing made out of cannibalized particles from other daemons? 

Swallowing down these thoughts, Benjamin pressed the door chime. 

“Come.”

Picard’s tone was genial, welcoming, but it regardless cut through Sisko like a phaser beam. His daemon, the elegant [secretary bird](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQWIzS_zkrM), dipped her head demurely at Delphi, but the badger was bristling back, hairs on end, her whole body tensed like a coiled spring -

> _The room was dark and smoky, the air acrid and choking, the floor shuddering under their feet and klaxon sirens blaring in Benjamin’s ears. He glanced down at Delphi and her fur was caked with blood, with Dust. She panted up at him, eyes rolling, then darted off down a corridor, scurrying under debris and through the panicked crowd, yanking their tether raw in Benjamin’s chest._
> 
> _He scrambled after her and saw the badger shoulder open the blocked door to their quarters, press through the gap. As Benjamin struggled through behind her Delphi darted to the left, and found Jake half pinned under a fallen shelf. She nosed frantically at his daemon as Benjamin picked the boy up, encouraging her to change into something that could fly or cling close to her human. “You’re gonna be okay,” Benjamin soothed as best as he could, and the little tortoise daemon laboriously shifted into a swallow that swooped up and clung to Jake’s chest. “We’re gonna get your mom and we’re all gonna get out of here.” He handed his son off to a lieutenant with a frantically chattering squirrel daemon - “get him to Pod fifteen, we will be there in a moment!” - and then saw Jennifer._
> 
> _Delphi yelped. As Benjamin struggled to pull apart the debris pinning Jennifer to the floor the badger grabbed at the same pylon and yanked, teeth squealing against the blackened metal. When it became apparent the structure would not move she flattened herself to the ground and wormed underneath the remains of their quarters’ kitchen wall, struggling to get close to Benjamin’s wife and the mother of his child._
> 
> _Jennifer’s right hand was curled into a fist, resting on her chest, the arm pinned to her body by a heavy metal beam. Delphi climbed heavily onto her torso and scrabbled at her fingers, trying to pry her hand open with her paws. Benjamin, clambering over rubble and ducking under showers of sparks raining down, distantly felt the electric shock of human-daemon contact singing in his own body, but instead of the usual accompanying feelings of home and safe and family and love it was desperation and skin-crawling nausea and terror as Delphi’s touch went unreciprocated and unacknowledged._
> 
> _And then the floor heaved underneath their feet, and Jennifer’s hand jostled open, and the feeling of touch vanished as the smear of golden Dust that had just been Idris spilled out onto Jennifer’s stilled chest._
> 
> _Someone had grabbed Benjamin, pulled him back, somehow pulled Delphi back, and although Benjamin knew he was shouting, screaming, he couldn’t hear his own voice. He found himself numbly stumbling towards their muster station, falling back on the motions of a thousand safety drills, only stopping to pick up Delphi and carry her as the corridors choked with evacuating officers and civilians. Only when he was aboard the pod, the badger leaping out of his arms so that he could scoop up Jake, did Benjamin begin to process his surroundings once more. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he murmured over and over, while Delphi frantically curled around Magnolia, now shaped like a dull-eyed rabbit._
> 
> _They strapped in, the pod shot out into space, and through the viewscreen Benjamin watched his home explode into a glittering golden cloud, the burning debris of the ship mingling with the ashes of hundreds, and the Dust of their daemons, scattering out among the stars -_

Sharp teeth dug into his calf, and Benjamin was back on the Enterprise. Delphi had such a tight grip on his leg he felt blood dampen his pantleg, and he distantly tasted copper in his daemon’s mouth. She looked up at him, let go, nosed at the bloody bitemark apologetically. _Stay here,_ she thought, and Benjamin suddenly felt ashamed of his reaction.

Picard was studying his tense posture and gritted teeth, brow furrowed with concern. The secretary bird daemon tilted her elegant head. “Commander? Are you all right?”

Benjamin swallowed, briefly yet intensely appreciative of the dark color of Starfleet uniforms. Delphi self-consciously stepped in front of his bloody calf, and Benjamin’s shame flared, turned outwards. “I am fine. It’s been a long time.” 

The captain frowned. “Have we met before?”

“Yes, sir.” Benjamin’s voice was low and level. “I was on the _Saratoga_ at Wolf 359.” 

Picard’s daemon flinched backwards, crest feathers pinning tight against her skull. Benjamin felt a dull sense of satisfaction when he saw the captain’s expression solidify into a defensive grimace. That’s right, he thought savagely, that’s just a fraction of what Jake and I endured. 

The rest of the conversation was brief and stiff. Delphi did her best to stare down the raptor daemon, who frankly did not seem interested in meeting her gaze. She quickly turned her head and began to preen her feathers in a very showy fashion, as if to trumpet her disinterest in Benjamin and his experiences. Benjamin kept his arms held tight behind his back, focusing on the now gently throbbing bite mark on his leg. He maintained a professional stiff-backed posture until dismissed, but the moment the observation deck doors swished closed behind Benjamin Delphi lept into his arms and he buried his face in her fur. They shared a few deep, grounding breaths, then the commander once again gained control over his emotions, shoving them down into the murky subconscious he shared with his daemon. When he joined an ensign on the Enterprise turbolift moments later, Benjamin was the platonic ideal of professional placidity. If the young engineer and her marmoset daemon noticed a slight limp as he set off towards the transporter bay, she did not think much of it.

x

Benjamin found his new First Officer on the promenade, helping a handful of other Bajorans haul debris out of the main pathway. Kira had stripped off her jacket, down to her tank top undershirt, and was shiny with grease and sweat in the still Cardassia-warm station air. Her [little daemon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8edS07_Cys&t=101s) stayed close to her heels, echoing each movement.

She glanced up at Benjamin with a grunt, kept dragging the piece of metal sheeting towards the dumpster. “Everyone else is busy repairing the primary systems.” She flipped the heavy sheet over the lip of the bin and it crashed in. Scrubbing her dirty hands on her pant legs, she walked back over to Benjamin and grabbed another piece. “I suppose Starfleet officers aren’t used to getting their hands dirty.”

Benjamin thought about pointing out the obvious - if they didn’t repair the life support systems it wouldn’t matter if the promenade was trashed, they would all be dead regardless - but instead he grabbed the other end of the pylon piece Kira was dragging and helped her carry it to the dumpster. He felt the freshly scabbed toothmarks on his calf scrape against his pantleg, and he suppressed a flinch. 

Without acknowledging his help the Bajoran started in on another piece. “In the refugee camps, we learned to do whatever needed to be done. Didn’t matter who you were.”

The pika daemon snorted, shook out his fur like he was chasing away a bad memory. More than understandable, Benjamin thought, and Delphi used this derision as an opening for introductions. 

While Kira was picking up a length of twisted wire, Benjamin’s daemon left his side and trotted up to Kira, bowed her muzzle. “We were interrupted earlier - my name is Delphi. What’s yours?” 

The little mammal shook his head in irritation, sneezed. “No name. Don’t need one. Now help, or get out of the way.” 

“What?” Delphi tilted her head, confused, then glanced questioningly at Benjamin. “I thought Bajorans named their daemons,” he said. 

“We do.” Kira paused, wiped her forehead with her wrist, gave Benjamin a level glare. “When they settle. By their parents. When children become adults.” She grabbed the heavy metal again, hauled at it with all of her strength. “My parents died before I was five. So, no name.” With each exertion, her earring flashed in the dull station light. “Never needed one. Who has time to name their daemon when you’re running for your life?”

Benjamin still nodded, hoping the gesture was sympathetic and not patronizing. “That sounds… difficult.”

The pika barked out a nasty short laugh. “You could say that.” 

“So,” said Delphi, “what should I call you?”

“Nothing. Don’t talk to me.” The pika scurried back over to Kira, who bent down and scooped him up so he could perch on her shoulder. Little paws entwined into the straps of her shirt.

There was a pause in conversation, and Benjamin focused on moving the pieces of metal into the dumpster one by one. He was beginning to sweat too, and wondered when the engineering team would get around to fixing the climate control systems. 

“I was talking to our neighbor Quark,” he finally voiced, and deliberately did not react to the way the pika daemon bristled at our. “He’s laying down odds that the government is going to fail.: 

Kira snorted. “Quark knows a good bet when he hears one.” She flung the last few pieces of debris into the dumpster, turned to face Benjamin. “This government will be gone in a week, and so will you.” 

Delphi, still unsure of how to relate to this strange angry woman and her angrier daemon, had retreated to Benjamin’s side. She leaned her bulk up against his good leg. “What will happen to Bajor then?” Benjamin asked.

“Civil war.” Kira stood in front of the demolished storefront, now clear of the larger chunks of debris, with her hands on her hips. She then moved her attention to the next destroyed shop and its own accompanying mess. 

“You think it’s inevitable?” Benjamin probed, as she started all over again. He fell in to step next to Kira and helped her move another large piece of metal. 

Her daemon shook his head again, and Kira half-shrugged under the weight of the broken panel. “The only one who can prevent it is Opaka.”

This was a new name to Benjamin. “Opaka?”

“Our spiritual leader. She’s known as the Kai.” The dumpster was now almost full, and the two of them leaned this large piece up against its side. Kira went hunting for the control panel and punched the activation switch. The compactor rumbled to life, crushing the debris into smaller and smaller cubes. 

Kira stood across from Benjamin, arms folded. “Our religion is the only thing that holds my people together,” she said, bluntly. “If she would call for unity, they would listen. The leaders of all the factions have tried to get to her, but she lives in seclusion. Rarely sees anyone.”

The pika suddenly sat up straight, ears pricked, little paws digging into Kira’s shoulder. “Speaking of -”

Benjamin turned, following the daemon’s gaze. The Bajoran priest he had brushed off earlier was approaching the two of them, his salamander daemon curled on his shoulder, echoing the half-circle shape of his earring. 

“Commander.” His voice was soft. “It’s time.” 

As Benjamin followed him off the promenade Delphi glanced back over her shoulder. Kira was still standing by the dumpster, but she had clasped her daemon to her chest with both hands. The badger’s ears, better than her human’s, picked up a low murmur of conversation, but she could not distinguish if the tone was hateful, or hopeful.


	2. Chapter 2

Compared to the rest of the city, the Bajoran temple was in good shape. As their shuttle sank through the atmosphere the view screens showed shattered domes, burnt-out husks of homes and shops, people and daemons wandering through the streets like ants in a smashed anthill. But the temple gardens, and the building Benjamin was in now, were mostly unscathed. They may as well have stepped from the war-torn planet onto a holodeck; the sandstone bricks were sun-warmed beneath Delphi’s paws, and the air was full of incense and distant prayers. At his daemon’s gentle mental prodding Benjamin had to admit it was a pleasant change of pace from the too-warm recycled air and dusty dark corners of Deep Space Nine. 

As they waited in the cloyster, Delphi leapt up onto a stone ledge surrounding a reflection pool. She took in a deep breath of the scented air. “It’s nice here,” she said. “Calm.”

“Just as long as you don’t look out the windows,” Benjamin replied. Beyond the gardens and stone walls of the monastery the shattered remains of the city were still visible. 

An older woman, draped in archaic Bajoran temple garments, walked briskly into the cloyster. Following her with much slower steps was a large, heavy-bodied [lizard daemon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUdEIBMNVwk&t=3s) with a long slender snout. As the Kai greeted Benjamin, Delphi pressed into the side of his calf and he felt her whiskers shiver; her daemon was a good 12 feet away, still approaching with a maddening slowness that did not betray the levels of pain one would expect when their daemon was so far from their side. 

Without thinking she set a sharp carnassial tooth into Benjamin’s leg, preparing to bite down, but then caught herself and stopped. From across the room the Bajoran daemon glanced at Delphi, her reptilian muzzle unreadable. 

Benjamin introduced himself, extended a hand, expecting the now-familiar Bajoran ear greeting. His first impression of the Kai was not what he expected from a religious figure; instead of cool haughtiness or superiority, Opaka was listening to him with the air of a teacher meeting a once favorite but long ago student, who was pleased with their pupil’s progress. 

“I apologise for the condition in which we greet you.” She gestured towards a window, at the desolation beyond the temple walls. “We are rebuilding, but progress is slow.”

The Kai sat down by the side of a reflecting pool and Benjamin followed suit. “The Cardassians?”

“The occupiers thought that attacking our temples would destroy us more quickly.” Kai Opaka smiled sadly. “As the saying goes, attack the soul, destroy the body without a single touch.”

Opaka diverted her gaze down towards the badger daemon. The crocodile finally arrived at her side and came to a still. Delphi, long used to staring matches between bigger and more intimidating daemons, met her gaze evenly. 

Then, the crocodile spoke, in a light fluting voice that took both man and daemon by surprise: “what is your name, _pagh?_ ”

Sisko frowned at the last word - the universal translator skipped over it, as it does with most proper nouns and untranslatable words. But the question was undoubtedly addressed at his daemon so Benjamin replies, “her name is Delphi. Pagh?”

The Kai smiled. “What a fortuitous name for the Emissary. Your pagh is your life force, your companion gifted by the Prophets and guider of your journey.” She gestured down to her own daemon. “She is Mother of Thousands. Just as Delphi is renewed by your presence, a Bajoran is renewed by the Prophets, and their companion is renewed by their bond. Pagh is the bond between man and daemon.” This time, the universal translator did not skip over the unknown word. “To greatly simplify, if a man is the scroll on an altar, and his daemon is the flame, the altar is his pagh itself - the thing holding the two in place.”

Delphi shuffled her front paws uneasily, not used to scrutiny from humanoids as well as daemons.

“As your pagh lead you here, so too will it cause your bond to take on a new shape. As your world changes, so does your soul.”

Now the Kai was sitting directly across from Benjamin, and she extended a hand and cupped his left ear. Benjamin began to protest, started to stand, but then Mother of Thousands had one of Delphi’s short round ears gently pinned between her jaws. 

“Kai Opaka -” Benjamin began to protest, Delphi attempting to wriggle free, but Opaka squeezed his ear even more tightly. “Just breathe,” she said, more firmly.

For a quiet moment all four were still, Kai Opaka and her daemon both wearing expressions of great concentration, Delphi and Benjamin both frozen and confused, but as Benjamin gave in and let out a long slow breath, he felt some tightness in his chest loosen. It was as if he had taken off a leaden vest he hadn’t even known was there. 

Then the Kai stopped, smiled. “Ironic. One who does not wish to be among us is to be the Emissary.”

“We are pleased to meet you, Emissary Home-of-Prophets. Emissary Sisko Benjamin.” The gharial daemon closed her eyes, bowed her head. 

Benjamin said “what?” at the same time Delphi said “emissary?” The Kai ignored them both, stood, maintained her opaque yet kind smile. With the touch of a hidden button the hologram illusion of a reflecting pool dissolved, revealing stairs descending into the understory of the temple. 

“Please, come with me. There is something you must see.”

x

> _This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. Jennifer was dead. Jennifer was dead and this meeting had taken place decades ago. This isn’t Jennifer._
> 
> _Benjamin kept telling himself this over and over as he stared down, dumbfounded, at his wife. His wife as he first knew her, on the beach._
> 
> _He was almost overcoming the mental battle, telling himself this was another hallucination, a latent symptom, when Delphi joyfully bounded forwards, landed on the towel with a thud, spraying more sand everywhere. She dropped into a play bow, grumbled, paws tapping back and forth on the towel._
> 
> _Idris launched himself up off of Jennifer’s hair, fluttered around in a lazy circle, drifted down to Delphi. She perched on the badger’s ear and when Benjamin felt the distant hum of contact through Delphi’s bond it was all he could do to not burst into tears of joy. Instead he whooped, laughing, the hot sand forgotten, Bajor forgotten, Kai Opaka forgotten, the last four years forgotten._
> 
> _Jennifer, half amused, half exasperated, all gloriously, impossibly, wonderfully alive, stood up and made to leave. Benjamin hastened after her, falling in to easy stride next to her achingly familiar pace. Delphi loped along between the two, Idris still perched to her fur. The four of them, together again, complete._

Benjamin had accepted this new reality so quickly, so easily, so gratefully, that when the image dissolved around him once more it completely caught him off guard. When he and Delphi were again standing in the Bajoran temple chamber, shivering suddenly at the perceived change in temperature, he felt the loss as a physical hit, knees suddenly weak. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat as Delphi stumbled and bumped into his leg. The dull throb of the now-scabbed bite mark jolted him back to the present.

Kai Opaka closed the little cabinet, the room darkening as the glow within was concealed. “Nine Orbs,” she said calmly, as if Benjamin’s reality hadn’t just been irreversibly shattered. “Nine orbs like this one have appeared in the skies above Bajor over the past ten thousand years. The Cardassians took the others. You must find the Celestial Temple before they do.”

Benjamin, still fumbling for understanding, repeated, “The Celestial Temple?”

The Kai’s daemon nudged at Delphi’s side with a long pointed snout, as if concerned with her wellbeing. The badger shook her head muzzily. Kai Opaka continued, “Tradition says the Orbs were sent by the Prophets to teach us. What we have learned has shaped our theology, our understanding of ourselves and others. Without the Orbs, there would be no Bajor. And the Cardassians will do anything to decipher their powers.” 

“If they discover the Celestial Temple,” Mother-of-Thousands murmured, almost to herself, “they could destroy it.”

“What makes you think I can find your Temple?”

Opaka picked up the box containing the Orb and pressed it into Benjamin’s hands. It felt deceptively light, the wood polished smooth by centuries of reverential handling. “This will help you.”

“Kai Opaka -” Benjamin began, but was cut off.

“I can’t unite my people until I know the Prophets have been warned.” As she spoke, Opaka’s daemon retreated to her side, and gently mouthed at the fingers of an outstretched hand. Benjamin found himself mirroring the gesture, half-crouching to scratch behind Delphi’s ears with his free hand. Delphi licked her lips nervously, kept her mouth closed. 

“You will find the Temple.” It was a statement set in stone. “Not for Bajor, not for the Federation, but for your own pagh.” The Kai smiled at Benjamin, tracing a finger down her daemon’s snout. “This is the shape your bond has taken. It is, quite simply, the journey you have always been destined to take.”

x

The Orb was still glowing when Benjamin handed it over to Dax, in the hastily repurposed station lab. Like everywhere else on Deep Space Nine, the room was filled with debris and scrapped Cardassian tech. The Orb’s glow illuminated broken computer monitors and cannibalized circuit panels.

Benjamin crossed his arms, tense. He still felt shaken by his experience in the temple. The entire shuttle ride back to the station Delphi had been uncharacteristically quiet, curled up in a vacant co-pilot’s seat on the other side of the cabin. Benjamin had spent the entire trip focused on the viewscreens, firmly redirecting his mind every time it wandered back to the Orb, and the possibility of returning to the same memory of Jennifer. 

His leg still ached. He could almost feel the hot sand burning underfoot. 

“We do have one advantage.” Benjamin leaned forward, peering into the Orb’s swirling depths. “The monks have been studying these things for ten thousand years.” 

Dax raised her eyebrows. “That should give us something.”

“I’ve had our computers set up to interface with their historical data banks. Chief O’Brien says the connection is a little threadbare, but it should still work.” Benjamin grimaced at the console Dax had set up as her makeshift workstation, wiped a smudge of grime off the screen. “Let me know what you can dig up.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Soon, Dax. The eight other orbs are probably in some Cardassian laboratory, being turned upside down and inside out.” 

The Trill was already typing away at the computer. She nodded. 

“Good.” Benjamin, already preoccupied with the next task on his perpetually growing list of responsibilities, turned to follow Delphi out of the lab. 

“Wait, Benjamin -” 

He paused, halfway through the door into the hall. Dax had pushed herself back from the computer monitor, swiveled to face him. 

“I was happy when I heard you accepted this assignment.” She drew in a hesitant breath, then continued, “I’ve been worried about you.” 

Unspoken words of comfort hung in the air between them, and Benjamin greatly appreciated her restraint. 

Delphi trotted back into the room, halving the distance between Benjamin and the Trill. “It’s good to see you too,” she chuffed. 

Dax smiled, returned to her work. As Benjamin left the lab, he felt some of the tension that had crystalized around his spine melt away. With the Orb out of sight, he could almost convince himself the vision he experienced in the Bajoran temple had been a dream, a manufactured memory.

x

The trip to the Denorios Belt, and the subsequent discovery of the wormhole, helped to further push the encounter with Kai Opaka out of Benjamin’s mind. This, he suddenly realized, almost giddy, this is why he joined Starfleet in the first place. The thrill of discovering something completely new, the potential to explore and move beyond anything known.

However, as their shuttle inexplicably slowed and their engines sputtered to a halt, Benjamin was vividly reminded of the Kai’s prediction. Her calm yet firm demeanor as she told him to find the Celestial Temple. Her unshakable faith in his role in the future of Bajor.

x

“I’m picking up atmosphere.”

“Inside a wormhole?”

“Capable of supporting life ...We’ve just landed.”

“On _what?_ ” 

The external hatch slid open and Benjamin descended the short ramp to the uneven ground. It was littered with boulders and hunks of twisted metal, and he struggled to gain footing. However, beside him, Dax stepped lightly over the debris and looked around with awe. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

Benjamin shot her an incredulous glance, as her tall frame was illuminated by a sickly green bolt of lightning. “You have a strange eye for beauty, Dax.”

She was looking above them, gazing up above into the tempestuous sky. Ugly purple clouds clotted the horizon. “You don’t think this is the most idyllic place you’ve ever seen?”

“Don’t you see the storm?” 

“It’s as clear as -” Dax turned to look over at Benjamin then frowned abruptly. “Where’s Delphi?”

Benjamin gasped. He had been so focused on this new hostile environment he hadn’t even noticed her absence - but he hadn’t felt the pain of a stretched bond, either. He spun around, confusion collapsing into alarm. “What -?”

“Benjamin!” Delphi’s voice rang out, and he turned to see her tumbling down a jagged slope. She looked far away, too far away, but Benjamin barely registered the abnormality on top of everything else. The daemon cantered up to him, panting, and came to a rest at his feet. “We’re back! How are we back?”

“Back where?” 

“The beach, Ben! Same as before! With Jennifer!” The badger swung her head back and forth eagerly, scanning the bleak environment. “Where is she? Where’s Idris?”

“I just see -” Something flickered in the corner of his vision, and Benjamin’s confused protest died on his lips. Dax followed his gaze across the plateau. “Is that -?”

“You see it too?” 

The Orb drifted closer. It was nearly identical to the one Kai Opaka had entrusted to Benjamin, with the same luminous swirling surface. Before either Benjamin or Dax could react a beam of light emanated from its center and swept across the landscape, first hitting the Trill - flashing prismatic when it touched first her head then her sternum - then the Human and his daemon. 

Once, as a cadet on a training mission, Benjamin had suffered a concussion. He had been running down a slope, slipped on the loose scree and slammed his head on a rock. Due to the cranial nature of the injury the medical officer who treated him also needed to examine Delphi - once with a tricord scan, then again physically. 

As the orb swept its iridescent beam across his body Benjamin flashed back to that uneasy, off-balance feeling he had when the doctor slid his hands through Delphi’s fur. The parasympathetic sharing of emotions had been dulled - Benjamin felt nothing but professional distance from the humanoid - but it was still uncomfortable, clinical. Exposing. This sensation was almost identical. 

The orb ran its gaze across his body, then traced a vector through the air separating Benjamin and Delphi. The beam color fluttered iridescence, just as it had when presumably studying Dax’s two parallel nervous systems. 

Dax pulled out a tricorder, tapped a few buttons. “Low level ionic pattern,” she announced. “It’s probing us.” 

“Someone’s idea of shaking hands, maybe.” Benjamin fought to keep his tone even, then raised his voice and spoke as clearly as he could. “I am Commander Benjamin Sisko, of the United Federation of Planets.”

The Orb’s glowing aura pulsed once, then emitted a flash of eye-searing green light. 

To Benjamin’s right, Dax vanished. 

“Dax!” Benjamin yelled, but his voice was swallowed by the white void that suddenly enveloped him. 

Gravity and all physical sensations vanished, like music on an audio recording abruptly switched off. Oppressive nothingness rolled in. He tried to call for Delphi and heard nothing, but once again did not feel a physical distance from her body. 

He felt nothing, could see nothing. He tried to thrash against the nothingness, but there was no surface to push back against. Panic welled up, but he could not hear blood rushing in his ears, or feel his chest constrict. 

Benjamin had become part of the void.

Then, distant shapes began to form in the surrounding blankness. At first soft and desaturated, but growing in definition and vibrancy, depth and dimension sprouting up like grass after a spring rain. Sensation returned, bodily awareness returned, and Benjamin was suddenly slammed with the overwhelming presence of his physical body, his pounding heart hitting him like a brick wall. 

Delphi also appeared, and Benjamin fought the sudden presence of gravity and soft green turf underfoot as he stumbled over to her, scooped her up, pressed her body to his chest with shaking arms. She buried her face in his neck.

“Where were you -?”

“I don’t _know,_ I don’t know where we are -”

Benjamin closed his eyes, tried to block out some of the sudden environmental stimuli that threatened to overwhelm them both. Beyond his own heartbeat and Delphi’s loud panting breaths he could hear a soft roar, a sound that seemed to shift as it got louder: first the sound of distant waves hitting shore and pulling back out to sea, then the distant explosive cheering of an excited crowd, then repetitive phaser fire, then the chanting of Bajoran prayers -

Delphi squirmed back out of his arms, kicked up a spray of hot gritty sand as she hit the ground. It was suddenly bright, but not the flat brightness of the void Benjamin had experienced moments before. 

They were back on the beach. 

Jennifer, lying on the blanket, turned to squint up at Benjamin. “It is corporeal. A physical entity.”

Benjamin opened his mouth to speak, but the environment changed around him. Jennifer’s body melted away with the sand and sunshine, became the familiar dull carpeting of a Federation starship.

Delphi’s head jerked around as she took in their new surroundings. They were back in the conference room from the day before, Picard standing in front of them once more. 

The captain’s daemon tilted her head, as if lost in thought. “Partially incorporeal,” she continued. “An entity composed of many.”

“What?” Benjamin blurted out. “What did you say?”

Picard spoke. “It is responding to visual and auditory stimuli - linguistic communication.”

“Yes, linguistic communication.” Something like understanding was beginning to dawn on Benjamin, and he ventured, “Are you capable of communicating with me?”

The room shifted, plastic wall panels roughening into stone blocks, steady electric lighting flickering into torches and candles. In the monastery Kai Opaka was scrutinizing Benjamin. “What are you?”

“My species is known as Human.” Decades-old memories bloomed in Benjamin’s mind, as Starfleet curriculum on First Contact Protocols rose from the depths of his memory. “I come from a planet called Earth. I am composed of two physical bodies.”

Opaka’s gharial daemon, Mother-of-Thousands, shook her head matter-of-factly. “You are three entities,” she said. “Two corporeal, one like us.”

They were suddenly back on the beach. The being that disguised itself as Jennifer had sat up, was refastening her bikini top. “Why do you only use verbal communication? Why are you limited?”

Benjamin frowned. “I don’t understand.”

The hot sand beneath his feet solidified into rough wooden planks, and then he and Delphi were standing on the dock of Jake’s favorite holosuite program. Something completely identical to Jake was holding a fishing pole, feet dangling, while another thing that looked just like Magnolia batted at the surface of the water with a housecat’s paws. 

“You are three, but cannot address us as such.” Not-Jake nodded at them, first at Benjamin, then at Delphi, then at the gap between the two. “We are made the same, in your middle. What is Earth?”

“Earth is where we are from. This is Earth.” Benjamin waved at hand at the dock, the pond, the Louisiana pine woods beyond. 

“You and I are very different species. It will take time to understand one another.”

Everything slid together once more, and Benjamin and Delphi were back on the Enterprise. Picard asked, “Time? What is this?”

Before Benjamin could respond, he was once again facing Kai Opaka. “These creatures must be destroyed before they destroy us,” she said, and Benjamin began to gather the impression that these voices came from distinct entities, not all from the same source. And they were discussing his presence. 

The Opaka’s face grew pale, sprouted mechanical components, and Benjamin was suddenly staring up at Picard as a Borg, glaring down at him from a viewscreen on the _Saratoga._ “It is aggressive. Malevolent.”

A baseball catcher, face shield flipped upwards, frowned at Benjamin. “Adversarial.”

“I am not your enemy. I was sent here by the people you contacted.”

“Contacted?”

“With your devices, your Orbs.”

The raptor daemon spread her wings and roused her feathers, shaking her head in irritation. “We seek contact with other lifeforms. Not corporeal creatures who wish to annihilate us.”

“We haven’t come to annihilate anyone,” Delphi replied. She and Benjamin had both fallen into the familiar rhythm of _daemon speaks to daemon_ and _human speaks to human,_ although it was now clear that these entities were not connected with the same bond that tied Benjamin and Delphi. That had tied Jennifer and Idris. 

As if sensing this thought and actively responding, the environment changed.

Jennifer on the beach, Idris perched on her hand. “Destroy it now.”

“My species respects life above all else. Can you say the same?” Benjamin’s words came out in a rush. “I do not understand the threat I bring to you, but _I am not your enemy._ Allow me to prove it.”

Idris slowly flapped his labradorite wings. “Prove it?” 

Benjamin drew in a breath, hesitated. The weight of this conversation was beginning to bear down on him, and Delphi shivered. They were doing this not only for their own survival, for the slimmest chance of returning to the Alpha Quadrant and Jake and Magnolia and Earth; but also for the future of the Federation. 

If this diplomatic exchange soured these beings on all corporeal life, who knows what they would do next? If these entities could create a wormhole, connecting thousands of lightyears of space like a sheet of paper folded in half, what else could they do? Bajor could only be the first casualty of millions.

Yet despite the stakes, Benjamin was beginning to once again feel that thrill of discovery he had first rekindled with Dax on the other side of the wormhole. They could communicate. They could exchange ideas. These beings could change everything anyone had even known or discovered about the physical universe. The possibilities were limitless.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said, slowly. Jennifer frowned. “Beginning?”

“It can be argued that a human is ultimately the sum of his experiences,” Benjamin explained. “That is what shapes us - what shaped my daemon.” He gestured to Delphi, who sat up a little straighter at his side.

Another environmental shift. Jake, at the fishing hole. “Experiences? What is this?”

“Memories. Events from my past, like this one.” 

“Past?”

“Things that happened before now.”

The Jake entity once again looked confused, mirroring Benjamin’s own expression. 

Delphi’s ears pricked forward. “They have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about.”

“What comes before now is no different than what is now,” Jake said, bemused. Magnolia continued, “Or what is to come. It is one’s existence.”

“Then, for you,” Benjamin murmured, “there is no linear time.”

Jennifer frowned, brushing sand off her legs. “Linear time. What is this?”

“My species lives in one point in time,” Benjamin explained. “Once we move beyond that point, it becomes the past, and that point is no longer accessible to us. The future, all that is still to come, does not yet exist for us.”

“Does not exist yet?”

“That is the nature of linear existence.” Benjamin bent down, scooped Delphi up into his arms, hefted her weight close against his body. “And if you examine it - examine us - more closely, then you will see that you do not need to fear me.”

The waves roared in to fill the silence. The Jennifer entity extended a hand, and the Idris entity perched on her fingertips, fanning out his delicate wings. 

“Idris?”

Benjamin swallowed. “Yes, that was his name. Her name was Jennifer.”

“What is Idris?” The butterfly fluttered up into the air, buffeted by the breeze sailing in off the ocean.

“He was part of Jennifer. As Delphi is part of me.” Benjamin set his daemon back down, and she lumbered up to the mock daemon. The Idris entity spiraled above her head.

“But he was not corporeal. Only a fragment of this entity exists in physical space.”

“The shape a daemon takes depends on our experience of linear time. Of one moment following another.” Benjamin gestured down to Delphi, who had again sunk into a play bow and was chasing after the butterfly. “Events in my life made me the person I am today, and that is why Delphi looks like she does. If I had experienced my life in a different order, I would be a different person, and Delphi would be a different shape. Likewise, experiences in Jennifer’s life made Idris look the way he is.”

“The daemon shape…” Jennifer gazed at Delphi, then at Idris. “It bookends all of the other shapes. Idris is many things, but is in this shape more than the others.” 

“The connection that holds your two physical forms together is not corporeal.” The butterfly daemon entity flattened its wings, blue scales dotted with grains of sand. “It is the only part of you like us. It has no physical properties, but it is what separates you and your daemon from the other physical objects of your world.”

Benjamin thought back to Kai Opaka, holding his ear in the temple. Speaking of his pagh. The scroll, the flame, the altar. 

“Your ability to tie physical to incorporeal frightens us. It is unnatural.”

The Jennifer entity gazed at her hands, then again at Idris. “She is part of your existence.”

“She is now part of my past. She is no longer alive. I lost her some time ago.”

“Lost? What is this?”

“In a linear existence, we can’t go back to the past to get something we left behind. We only move forwards. She is lost.”

The world flickered back to the Bajoran temple. Opaka shook her head. “It is inconceivable that any species could exist in such a manner. You are deceiving us.”

“As physical, linear entities, most of our existence is out of our reach. As a human, all I can interact with is the present moment. But once that has passed, I can know of it, but I cannot touch it. We call these past moments memories.”

The world changed again, and Benjamin was in the collapsing halls of the _Saratoga_. The officer hefting Jake’s unconscious body looked around them, taking in the chaos of the rapidly evacuating ship. “But you exist here.”

Benjamin swallowed against the sudden heaviness in his chest. “It is… difficult to be here, more difficult than any other memory. This is where I lost Jennifer.”

The ensign looked even more confused, more insistent. “But you exist here.”

“I don’t understand,” Benjamin replied, “I - I don’t want to be here.”

Suddenly, mercifully, the _Saratoga_ vanished and Benjamin was once again absorbed by the featureless void. He embraced the sudden absence of physical sensation with relief. 

“What happened?” Benjamin asked the nothingness. 

For the second time an environment built itself up around Benjamin and Delphi, recreating the Enterprise and Captain Picard. “More of your kind.”

“What? More ships through the wormhole?”

“Wormhole?” Picard repeated back. “What is this?”

“The passage that brought me here.” 

Again, a sudden absence of everything. Benjamin barely had time to comprehend the change before Picard reappeared.

“Our existence is disrupted whenever a corporeal entity enters the passage.”

The Enterprise shifted to the _Saratoga_ , the floor shaking, fires erupting from broken display panels and oxygen lines. Over the wail of security alarms, the first officer called, “Your physical nature is inherently destructive to our existence!”

A medic, scanning a dead body with a tricorder, looked up and nodded in agreement. “You live in a world without consequences. There can be no reasoning with you.”

“That’s not true!” Benjamin shouted over the noise. “We’re aware that every choice we make has a consequence!”

“Your corporeal existence means you cannot take responsibility for your actions.”

Benjamin shook his head, then realized this gesture was probably lost on the Jake entity he once again faced. “We use past experiences to guide us. For Jennifer and me, all the experiences in our lives prepared us for the day we met on the beach, helped us recognize that we had a future together.”

Mercifully, the _Saratoga_ gave way to a baseball pitch. An umpire - Benjamin recognized the man as a character from one of his holodeck programs - stood next to a coyote daemon. 

“Evidence. You are aggressive,” the coyote growled. “Adversarial.”

“Competition,” Benjamin corrected. “It’s a game that Jake and I play, called baseball.”

“What is that?”

“It’s for fun.” Benjamin took the baseball from the umpire’s hands. “I throw this ball, and a man with a bat - that stick over there - tries to hit it. My team tries to catch it. The important thing is, it’s linear. Every time I throw this ball, a hundred different things can happen, and it can change the shape of the game.” 

“Change the shape?”

“Every play, every movement I make, or the other players make, leads towards a specific outcome, and someone will win and someone will lose. I can try to strategize, plan for the possible options I anticipate, but it comes down to one pitch after another, and the consequences of each.” 

“And you have no idea what the outcome is,” the umpire said, voice nearly awed, “until the game is completed.”

“That’s right.” Benjamin tossed the baseball towards one of the holographic game characters, who took it and flung it to third base, tagging out a runner. “In fact, the game wouldn’t be worth playing if we knew what was going to happen!”

Another change in scenery. Jake swung his legs off the dock, frowned. “You… value your ignorance of what is to come?”

“That’s the most important thing to understand about humans.” Benjamin sat down next to him, Delphi in between. “It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers.”

The Jake entity was gazing out across the water. The breeze buffeted Magnolia’s fur. Benjamin hesitated, again feeling the profound implications of this interaction, how its effects would ripple out through the known universe. 

“That is why I am here,” he said, gently. “Not to conquer you with weapons or ideas, but to co-exist and learn. Humans - we explore our lives, day by day, and we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge.” 

“Your existence is improbable.”

“And we cherish it. We explore and we learn, and we use our knowledge. Every moment, every day, we are building upon our past. Our lives occur once moment at a time, but the moments are not isolated. They all depend on what came before, and what we predict will come next.” 

Kai Opaka’s daemon tilted her head at Delphi, as if seeking confirmation. 

“And this influences everything, like our daemons,” Benjamin continued. “If I had grown up on a different planet, or even in a different country, Delphi would look different. If my father had been a starfleet officer instead of a chef, Delphi would look different. Like with the game, countless factors make me unique, and make Delphi unique.”

“That is what makes humans thrive. We do not live in security. We do not know what the next moment will bring. We rely on our memories, our past experiences, to help us navigate the future.” 

Benjamin closed his eyes, saw the lights dim through his eyelids, and he knew he was back on the _Saratoga_. “Please. I do not want to be here.”

The officer leaning over Jennifer’s body looked up at him. “If all you say is true, why do you exist here?”

Benjamin was suddenly very tired and very angry. “What is the point of bringing me back again to this?” 

Delphi, feeding off his agitation, growled at the officer, hackles raised. 

The environment fluttered, changed once more. Jake said, “We do not bring you here.”

Jennifer said, “You bring us here.”

The _Saratoga_ officer said, “You exist here.”

“Then give me the power to lead you somewhere else!” Benjamin pleaded. “Anywhere else.”

Delphi was twining around Benjamin’s legs, snarling in frustration. For a lack of a better target she lunged at Benjamin’s good leg, biting down hard. Benjamin felt her vague sense of satisfaction as he began to bleed again. 

Kai Opaka gave him a pitying look. “We cannot give you what you deny yourself.”

Delphi raked her claws along her own flank, at Benjamin once again. She was panting, gasping for air. 

“Look for solutions from within, Commander.” Mother of Thousands stood still, calm, a stark contrast to Delphi’s anger. 

They snapped back to the ship. The smoking hallway, the panic thick in the air. 

Benjamin gazed down at Jennifer’s body for what felt like the millionth time in an hour. He noticed for the first time her earrings - she was wearing a pair Jake had helped Benjamin pick out as a gift. When he was small they had chosen that pair in particular, because they matched Idris’ wings. 

The sudden rage left Benjamin as soon as it had appeared. Delphi, apologetic, stood up on her hind legs to nuzzle at Benjamin’s hand. 

Benjamin’s voice was a whisper. “I was ready to die with her.”

“Die? What is this?”

Benjamin knelt down, gathered Delphi up into his arms. She shoved her muzzle under his chin, trying to express the guilt and sorrow and confusion she felt. 

“Death is the termination of linear existence,” Benjamin said blankly, to Jennifer and Idris. “The end of our experience.”

The Jennifer entity stepped forward, gently touched his cheek.

Then Jennifer was on the floor, crushed, Idris snuffed out, her life ground to a halt. 

Benjamin realized he was watching himself, his past self desperately trying to lift the debris and free past Jennifer. The last Jennifer that would ever be.

He heard himself sob, “Damn it, we can’t just leave her here -” 

Paralyzing realization dawned, trickled down over Benjamin like ice water. The simple truth he had been working so hard to keep concealed bubbled to the surface of his shared mind and he slumped down on his knees, tightened his grip on Delphi. 

She whispered into his ear. “We never left this ship.”

“You exist here,” affirmed a Starfleet officer, carrying Jake’s unconscious body.

“You exist here,” continued Idris, before he was crushed into golden nothing. 

“I exist here.” Benjamin wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, Delphi pressed so close to his chest he could feel her daemon heart beating. His voice choked. “I see her like this every time I close my eyes. In the darkness, in the blink of an eye, I see her like this.”

“None of your past experiences helped prepare you for this consequence.” It was the young Jennifer who spoke, on the beach, a million miles away, but now all of the memories were crashing in on each other, overlapping like ripples on a pond - 

“We never figured out how to live without her,” Delphi said, her own voice wavering, echoing Benjamin’s. 

“So you choose to exist here.” Now a hundred different entities, a hundred different figures from Benjamin’s past reflecting and refracting back upon each other, spoke at once. “It is not linear.”

Benjamin was properly weeping now, chest heaving, clutching Delphi tight. “It is not linear,” he agreed. 

It was if Benjamin was back on the beach, but standing in the shallow surf. The tide rushed out in front of him dragging the world along with it, until the sunny shore was replaced with soft nothing, and he embraced it like the present.


	3. Chapter 3

It was after the Cardassians hastily retreated, after the Engineering team had somehow moved heaven and earth to pull this dessicated husk of a space station 160 million kilometers to the Wormhole in an impossibly short length of time, after somehow, miraculously, no one was killed, after the Enterprise and Picard had left with a much friendlier parting than meeting, that Benjamin found himself in front of his new quarters, finally able to draw a breath. 

He beeped himself in and found Dax reclining on one of the stiff-backed Cardassian couches, flipping through a pad and sipping from a scotch tumbler. A second glass sat on a low table, next to a nearly full bottle. 

Benjamin glanced over at the nonfunctional replicator in the kitchen, then looked back at Dax.

“It’s not replicated, I brought it with me.” She held the glass out in front of her, slowly swirled the liquid around so it caught the low light. “I thought you could use this tonight, just like old times.”

“Where’s Jake?” Benjamin crossed the room to stand next to the couch, Delphi trailing at his heels. 

“In his room, allegedly asleep.” Dax set the pad down and swung her legs off the couch, sitting up. “When he let me in he said that unless I was going to share any of Curzon’s… bluer stories, he might as well go back to reading.” She smiled, settling her glass back down on the table. “Apparently my stories of being a fighter pilot are too boring for him now.”

“Have you been here long?” Benjamin sat down on the couch next to Dax, saving a badger-sized space in case Delphi wanted to join him. Dax leaned forward, popped open the bottle, slowly poured out a finger. 

“Not that long. It took me a little while to disentangle myself from Doctor Bashir. And not in a fun way.”

“He won’t leave you alone, huh.”

“He won’t stop talking.” Dax handed the glass to Benjamin. “It’s like standing in front of an unsheilded warp core, except instead of radiation you’re hit with twenty minutes of solid bragging.”

“He is certainly enthusiastic.” Benjamin smiled a little at the memory of the young doctor, then swirled his own drink. He could feel the acerbic sting of alcohol in the air, through Delphi’s nose. 

“I will say, though, his daemon is lovely.” Dax set her elbow on an armrest, chin on hand. “I believe her name is Celess. He told me about flamingo ecology for a further 15 minutes before I could get a word in edgewise. Although,” she continued, glancing at Benjamin’s daemon, “she is not quite as striking as you, Del.”

“Some things can only be acquired with age.” The badger sat down on the floor, leaning into Benjamin’s ankle. 

“I’d call you rakishly rugged, even dashing.” Dax smiled at the daemon. 

“Hey, there’s a lot we could call you too, Old Man.” Benjamin took a slow sip of the scotch, let it settle onto his tongue. 

It was quiet for a moment. There were still a million new ambient sensations that Benjamin and Delphi were not used to: a quiet hiss of air recirculating through the life support system and the accompanying gentle breeze from a vent in the ceiling, the sound of footsteps in the hallways outside and above, the soft hum underfoot that was the living breathing essence of the station itself. All of these sounds and feelings and smells bore down on Delphi’s senses, making a complex and muddled melange of sensation. She would get used to it, eventually. They would get used to it. 

Dax was staring straight ahead, rolling her glass between her two palms. Finally, without turning her head, she asked: “Benjamin, are you doing okay?”

“What?” The question snapped Benjamin out of his daze, and his focus shifted back into himself. “In what sense, specifically?”

“With this whole… emissary thing.” The glass rolled back and forth, warmed by the heat of her palms. “It’s a lot to take in. Just being here is a lot to take in, and no one expected this.”

Benjamin swallowed, slowly. He leaned forward and set his glass back onto the coffee table. “I’m…” he began, then stopped. After a moment Delphi picked up the thread of his thoughts. “He will be okay, Dax,” she said, turning around to face the Trill. “In time.”

Dax found her entry point. “But…?” She probed. 

“But right now, honestly, I feel more than a little lost.” Benjamin turned in his seat, faced Dax; she did likewise. “I have no idea how to lead a people. I can’t be a mascot for the federation AND a spiritual figure.”

“You’re a good leader, Benjamin. You always have been.”

“In Starfleet, yes. But I know what is expected of me. I don’t out here. Out here…” he waved a hand at one of the windows looking out into the vastness of space, including the invisible pocket of the Wormhole. “This is completely different. I’m not prepared.”

“It is a brave new world,” Dax murmured in agreement. “But I have total confidence that you will make all the right calls.”

Benjamin sighed, rested his head in his hands. “Thank goodness for Kai Opaka, that’s all I can say.” 

“I will say, I never pegged you as the spiritual type. Maybe as the patron saint of baseball and fried okra,” Dax teased, lightly. 

Delphi snorted. “Just like you’re the patron saint of drinking and perverted old men.”

Dax snorted alcohol and then, eyes watering a little, kicked Delphi in the flank not unkindly. “Thanks a lot, you mangy old mutt.”

Delphi laughed, leapt onto the couch to sit between Benjamin and Dax. “Any time, old man.”

“Benjamin,” she said, slowly, and the unexpected hesitancy and apprehension in her voice was so decidedly un-Curzon that he sat up and frowned at her. It was as if the station beneath his feet had shifted slightly, a soft jarring transition that reminded him again that while this was still Dax, it wasn’t the Curzon who had terrorized Trill initiates and thrown Benjamin’s bachelor party. 

He was suddenly acutely, painfully aware of every single light year that separated him and this station from Earth, could feel the distance pulling at him the way Delphi would pull at him

_\- like she pulled him forwards when they found Jennifer pinned under that pylon, with Idris crushed in her fist -_

He gathered up Delphi, pulled her into his lap almost without thinking. The badger tilted her head. “Yes, Dax?”

If the Trill had noticed this gesture she ignored it diplomatically. “When you… interacted with the orb. What did you see? What experience did you have?”

Benjamin traced the light scar that ran across Delphi’s muzzle. “I was back on the beach. Where I met Jennifer.”

“Hmm.” Dax took another sip.

“Why? Did you see something?” Benjamin leaned forwards, Delphi wiggling out of the way, so he could pick his glass back up from the table. 

“I flashed back to Jadzia’s Joining ceremony. But, I was remembering it from the perspective of me, as in Dax the symbiote, not Curzon or Jadzia.”

Benjamin sat, patient, waiting for her to continue. She took another drink. 

“The symbiote is - well, you know what we look like. No eyes, no ears, no external sensory systems at all except for a bundle of nerves. Black to the whole world, outside of a host. I could remember it all happening before, and as Curzon I had seen the technicians and guides set everything up and I was confident it would all be fine. But there’s always this moment when you are completely blind to the world, and there is not a single thing you can do to defend yourself or. It felt vulnerable, horribly so.”

Benjamin had often wondered what ticks a hypothetical Dax daemon would have; if they would be physically close like himself and Delphi, or more distant like X and Y. He imagined that Jadzia Dax would be the type of person who drew comfort and strength from her daemon, whereas Curzon Dax would have kept his at arms length. He could imagine this Dax with some strange Trill animal, stroking their feathers the way she was stroking the edge of her glass right now, the way Curzon would run his finger along bars of latinum when he was winning his tenth dabo game of the night, or trace the edge of a PADD while he was reading. 

Dax turned in her seat to face Benjamin and Delphi. “Do you think the Orb somehow keys in on past key memories that made us feel that way? It somehow selects incidences that elicit strong emotions?”

“I don’t know.”

“I would like to investigate the rest of them one day,” she said. “I wonder if they all dredge up the same emotions and memories. Do you want to know what else I’ve discovered about the Orb?” 

Benjamin nodded, so Dax continued, “It’s almost entirely composed of Rusakov particles. Held together in a silica crystalline matrix. The density is on par with a settled form adult humanoid daemon. I don’t know who the Prophets are - from the sound of it you don’t really know, either - but I’ve never seen Rusakov particles embedded into a non-living thing before.”

“Any idea how it works?”

“If I had to guess…” she rubbed the side of her neck, lost in thought. “It’s almost like a storage device. An external drive. But for memories and experiences, and it’s like the drive accesses different storage for different people. Maybe it’s more like an encryption key. Based on what I read of Bajoran accounts regarding the Orbs, most people who interact with one experience vivid flashbacks and visions of their past or future. But beyond that…” Dax shrugged. “I’m not a Rusakov scholar. I can do some research, see if the Bajoran scientific community has any insights.”

“Hmm.” Benjamin scratched the fur behind Delphi’s ears as he thought. “That’s assuming there is any scientific community left. Or that the Cardassians didn’t destroy their universities or databanks.”

Dax cast her eyes down. “That’s true.”

Benjamin thought back to Gul Dukat, using friendly words to threaten and intimidate, coming closer and closer to touching Delphi with each expressive hand gesture. Del growled at the memory. 

One of the doors leading out of the living space slid open and Jake emerged, yawning. “You’re still here, Dax?” He asked, before spotting Benjamin. He brightened when he saw his father. “Dad, you’re finally back!” 

Delphi jumped down off the couch, trundled over to touch noses with a now rabbit-shaped Magnolia. 

Benjamin smiled, patted the couch next to him and Jake sat down with his dæmon in his lap. “Is your double shift over? Does that mean you have tomorrow off?”

“I don’t have the day off. But -“ he quickly interjected, seeing Jake’s disappointment - “I can leave early. If I get through all my meetings by 1500, we can squeeze in a game before dinner.”

Jake, puzzled, asked “There’s a holodeck here?”

“Holosuites, sure. But we might need to bring the program and have it installed. You do know where you packed your catchers mitt, right?” 

“Right!” Jake grinned. Magnolia shifted into the shape of a little black and white sugar glider, her preferred form for sports or running. “I can’t wait!”

“Just don’t think your old man is going to go easy on you, just because we haven’t played in a while.”

Jake laughed, but his eyes moved down to the scotch bottle on the low table. “Can I have some?”

“Not tonight.” Benjamin stood up, made movements to begin clearing the glasses and bottle. 

“We can get you more kiwi juice,” said Dax with a smirk. “Remember when Curzon told you it was bloodwine, and you thought you were drunk? Maggie was flying in circles all evening.”

“I’m a lot older now!”

“Well, if you’re going to hang around even more, I can tell more stories about you as a baby!” Dax smiled around her glass. “I remember when Benjamin and Jennifer first brought you home. They handed you to Curzon and you immediately spat up all over his shirt!”

Jake made a face. “If you’re gonna talk about mushy stuff like that, I’m going to go back to bed.” 

“I’ve never seen Benjamin so proud as he was the day Magnolia manifested into a solid form,” she continued with an exaggerated nostalgic sigh. “You were pretty before that, Maggie, but seeing you as a cute little badger cub just like Del -”

Jake groaned. “I’m outta here.” Daemon gathered up in his arms as a huge fluffy cat, he turned and stalked back out of the room.

“Good night, Jake, love you!” Dax shouted after him. There was a reply that may have been a preteen mumble along the lines of “I-love-you-too” and the sound of a door sliding shut. Dax laughed, sat back on the couch, glanced back at Benjamin. 

“I am really glad you both are here,” she sighed, smiling. 

Benjamin, done clearing the table of glasses, sat back down. “...I think I’m glad we’re here, too.”

“I should get going,” Dax sighed. “I’d like to perform a few more studies on the Orb tomorrow. Maybe do some more literature review.” She stood up, stretched, turned to leave.

Benjamin suddenly felt a wild impulse to grab her hand, not let her leave, to never let this feature of his old life slip out of his grasp. Before he could think he had already called out, “Dax?” 

She paused, halfway across the room to the door, expression quizzical. 

Benjamin opened his mouth to speak, closed it again as last minute indecision crowded his brain. But before he could say anything Delphi spoke up for him. “We want to show you something.”

Dax cocked her head to the side. “Sure, Benjamin. What is it?”

Delphi sat down in front of the window. Backlit by the stars, her face was shrouded in shadow as Benjamin began to walk backwards, facing her, facing Dax. When he was six feet away from his daemon Dax frowned. When he was ten feet away her brow creased in disbelief. Finally, when he stepped through the doors out of his quarters, out into the hall, and let the doors snick closed, he heard her muffled exclamation through the insulated metal.

The doors whooshed back open and Dax stood in front of Benjamin, incredulous, bracing both hands on either side of the doorway. After a silent moment, she finally blurted out, “Benjamin, what the hell was that?”

He could only shrug. “I have no idea.”

This distance from Delphi - approximately 20 feet - appeared to be the edge of Benjamin’s new range; he could feel the slightest sensation in his chest from their bond stretching, like the early warning headaches that preceded the migraines he suffered when he was young. He thought of their pagh, and Delphi stood and loped across the room to join the others, and the ache slacked and vanished. 

Dax was still reeling. Benjamin remembered Curzon once comparing a Trill symbiote to a daemon passed down through a dozen generations, and he assumed she was contemplating separation from the closest thing she had to Delphi. As if to prove his point, her arms drifted from her sides to wrap around her stomach. 

“How is this possible?” She asked, a little weakly, as the badger daemon slowed at her feet. “Are you hurt?”

Delphi shook out her fur. “Not really?” she said. “No more than about eight feet used to.”

“We discovered this after we got back,” Benjamin added. “After I submitted my report, and was examined by Doctor Bashir. Nothing unusual came up on our scans.”

“That type of distance…” Dax bit her lip. “This is unprecedented in humans, right? Or other humanoids?”

“As far as I know.” Suddenly self-conscious that they were all standing in the habitat ring hallway, Benjamin stepped back in the living room, Dax following. “I’m not even sure who I should tell.”

“This may not even be from our time in the wormhole,” Dax murmured. Her gaze was distant. “This ability to separate could have appeared hours ago, or days ago, or seconds after your noticed it.There’s too many variables to make any conclusions right away.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” asked Benjamin.

Dax opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted as Delphi stepped forward and gently butted her head against the Trill’s leg. Her starfleet uniform prevented skin to fur contact, but it was still an intimate gesture, something done with Dax in only the sincerest of moments. Once at Benjamin and Jennifer’s wedding, after Jake’s birth, and again when Curzon sat Benjamin down in his home and told him their host was dying. 

“We’re fine, Dax,” the daemon murmured. She shifted her weight, rested her chin against the Trill’s calf, looked up. “We’re still the same. See?” 

Dax hesitated, sighed, smiled. “It would be pretty hypocritical for me to be upset that you changed somehow.”

“No kidding.” Delphi laughed, rubbed the top of her head against the Trill’s leg like a housecat, and walked back over to her Human. 

“Del. Benjamin.” Dax squeezed Benjamin’s shoulder. “I’ll see you both at 0800 tomorrow. Get some rest.” 

“Tomorrow.” Benjamin nodded. The adrenaline that had kept him going for the past 50-odd hours was draining away, and his vision actually blurred as he watched the doors slide shut behind her. 

Delphi pawed at Benjamin’s leg, and he was brought back to alertness as she swiped at the bitemark she had left before. “We need to sleep,” she reminded him. The slight sting from the injury added emphasis, as if to say we need to care for ourselves better than this.

“Right.” Benjamin told the computer to dim the lights, and walked over to the door next to the one leading to Jake’s room. He paused before entering, turned around; the sparse living space was faintly illuminated by starlight. In this soft darkness it resembled their living quarters on the _Saratoga_ , and he briefly, suddenly, genuinely felt at home.


	4. Coda

A few weeks later Benjamin was slicing turnips for dinner when his personal com line beeped. Wiping his hands on a towel he answered the call, and was surprised to see a familiar Human face. “Doctor Acopian? I thought we weren’t speaking until next week.”

The Human woman smiled, her elegant tropical fish daemon swirling in his tank by her side. “Hi, Benjamin. I saw your name on the schedule, and wanted to call and confirm that you did actually make an appointment.”

“I did, yes.”

“Great! I’m really glad to hear that.” She tilted her head to the side and frowned a little. “It’s been three years, Benjamin - the last I heard from you I was signing off on your return to duty forms.”

“I know.” Delphi laid down at his feet, rested her head on her paws. 

“I read about your new post, and Bajor and the Wormhole - congratulations! It’s an incredible time for the Gamma Quadrant. And I am so happy that you are willing to continue to speak with me. But did something happen in particular?”

Benjamin paused, the previous weeks flashing before his eyes. Their arrival at the station. Kai Opaka and the Bajoran temple. Major Kira and her angry nameless daemon. Jadzia Dax, his staff meeting him one day then risking their lives for him the next. His final meeting with Picard, actually seeing the captain as a human being. The wormhole. 

Jennifer on the beach. 

“A lot of things happened,” he finally said. “But I think more than that I just need to talk about the _Saratoga_. Finally. I can’t keep blocking it out.”

The psychiatrist smiled again. “I am so happy to hear that.”

“So, you will call again for my appointment?”

“I will, but don’t hesitate to reach out before that if you need to.” Doctor Acopian sat up straight. “I look forward to talking further. Give my best to Jake.”

“I will.”

“Take care, Ben.” Then the screen went blank. 

Delphi stood up, stretched her paws out, meandered back to the kitchen. Benjamin followed her back, returned to dinner. Jake would be home soon, from doing god knows what with Nog. Tomorrow the senior staff had a meeting with representatives of both the Provisional Government and the Federation Open Trade Commission. There would probably be something wrong with the station life support controls that Engineering would need to fix, and some sort of dispute at Quark’s that Security would need to resolve, and Doctor Bashir would continue to repair the infirmary and treat the growing civilian population cautiously returning to the station. Major Kira had mentioned the first of a trade convoy arriving before departing for the Gamma Quadrant. 

The skin on his calf itched, but it was healing. The wounds were closing. 

The universe had not stopped with Jennifer, but Benjamin had. They no longer lived in the burning hallways of the _Saratoga_ , in the crushed remains of their home. They could live here, or on Bajor, or on Earth - any of a million places. 

“And she’s still part of our existence,” Delphi said to herself, voice soft. “She always will be.”

Benjamin thought about the Prophets, and how they could see his entire life laid out in both directions, and how, ultimately, it didn’t matter if he looked backwards or forwards. It simply was. 

He remembered what Jennifer had once said, shortly after they met. She had been reading old novels on her vacation.

Delphi was the one to say it out loud. 

“So it goes.”

_“All time is time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”_

Kurt Vonnegut, _Slaughterhouse Five_

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a set-the-stage short piece of trash, so that I wasn't beginning this series on too grim a note. Boy, was I wrong!
> 
> Please see the general notes document for this series. 
> 
> Perpetual thanks to my friends, particularly D and S, for enduring my over exuberance these past several months.


End file.
